Word.ws English Dictionary

bottom of the harbour

bottom of the harbour noun: a tax avoidance scheme from the 1970s.

Noun

bottom of the harbour (uncountable)

  1. (Australia, attributive) A tax avoidance scheme from the 1970s.
    • The 'bottom of the harbour' scheme was so named because a company once stripped of its assets, was dumped and, like a body in a cement suit, sank never to be seen again.1982 June 5, Sydney Morning Herald, page 13
    • John Howard argued that he was a relatively new Treasurer in 1978 when he was first given some advice from Treasury officials concerning the bottom-of-the-harbour tax schemes.1983, Rob Chalmers, Jenny Hutchison, Don Whitington, Inside Canberra: A Guide to Australian Federal Politics, page 121

Forms of bottom of the harbour

alternative formbottom-of-the-harbour

Origin of bottom of the harbour

From the metaphor of money hidden in an inaccessible place. Also, allegedly, incriminating records were in some cases disposed of by dumping them in Sydney Harbour.

Questions about bottom of the harbour

What does bottom of the harbour mean?
Bottom of the harbour means a tax avoidance scheme from the 1970s.
What part of speech is bottom of the harbour?
Bottom of the harbour is a noun.

Words near bottom of the harbour in the dictionary

  1. bottom lines
  2. bottom liver
  3. bottom livers
  4. bottom man
  5. bottom of the barrel
  6. bottom of the harbour
  7. bottom of the hour
  8. bottom of the line
  9. bottom of the ninth
  10. bottom of the sea
  11. bottom of the table

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bottom of the harbour (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 bottom of the harbour.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bottom of the harbour.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bottom_of_the_harbour. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.